NSA spy scandal causes distrust

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — While there are plenty of Americans who have been suspicious of digital communication, another group is emerging: Tech users distrustful of the electronic surveillance revealed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

“After Snowden, how comfortable can anyone be putting their personal or professional life online, or even on their own computer?” said Warren Sack, a professor in the film and digital media department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Jeff Hendrie, an 18-yearold high school senior in Detroit, lugs a typewriter to school every day and does just about everything the old-fashioned way. Before he typed, he wrote his papers in longhand. He uses a flip phone and considers the U. S. mail “the most secure system.” He has an email account, out of necessity, but he isn’t on social media.

“Pretty much everyone, including myself and my parents, say I was born in the wrong era,” Hendrie said.

New York City-based Laura Pitter, senior national security researcher at Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit group, said: “From my perspective, I’m much more careful about what I do online. I talk in person more now.”

She and others who monitor human rights worry about foreign governments watching them. “Even the most savvy people who work in this area find it’s very difficult to protect yourself.”